Saturday, 22 June 2013

Largo Law Hill Race

Having done a new Parkrun in the morning at Tollcross, I thought I might as well do a new hill race in the afternoon, so drove over to Fife and got lost for a while trying to find the Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo.

It was a completely different scene to the grim grey Glasgow rain in the morning. Bright sunshine, blue skys and dazzling light sparkling off the harbour. I was a bit spaced out after the Parkrun and the drive.

The race started up a fairly steep road, before turning through a bottleneck gate into a glade leading into an interesting wooded valley with a couple of stream crossings.

It took the precaution of starting fairly fast, so was in 4th place at the gate and running through the woods for the first 3km or so. I could hear panting noises close behind, unless they were some sort of strange echo. Eventually after a road crossing there were several kissing gates in close succession, at which point I realised Graham Nash of Carnethy was right behind me.

Graham got past just before the 2nd road crossing, at which point I realised Jonny Knox was right behind me, given the shouts he was getting. I resigned myself to getting caught by Jonny just before the really steep hill proper.

Once flogging up the steep hill I looked back and saw Charlotte Morgan approaching at a rate of knots. I almost held her off until the twin summits, and assumed she would totally drop me on the descent, but the gap never really changed much, so I thought I would probably catch her on the 4km run back.

I made a reasonable effort, and kept the gap down to about 20 seconds, but never really closed her down, so Charlotte finished 6th in a new women's record of about 50:32, and I was 7th in 50:54. Kyle Greig won the race in a new record time of 43-something.